Text: 1 Peter 1:17-23
Theme: “Reverent Fear and Heartfelt Love”
3rd Sunday of Easter/Mother's Day
May 8, 2011
First Presbyterian Church
Denton, Texas
Rev. Paul R. Dunklau
In the Name of Jesus
17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.[b] 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
25 but the word of the Lord endures forever.”[c]
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers among us! I speak to you mothers and to all of you today as a very fortunate man. I’ve been privileged to witness four generations of motherhood in action. I remember my grandmothers today. Grandma Dunklau, quite elderly, once had me sit down at her piano in Arlington, Nebraska. I played #416 from The Lutheran Hymnal. I can almost hear her voice and see her tears as she joined in with “Oh, that the Lord Would Guide My Ways.” I remember my Grandma Eggert. She once insisted that I had to take her home quickly from dinner at a restaurant. “Why Grandma?” I asked. “I need to get home to watch my show on TV.” “Which show is that?” I replied. “You have to promise me you won’t tell you mother,” she said, “but I watch Dallas.”
I remember my own mother, who, when beating me in a golf game in my high school years, said, “Paul, I won’t tell anyone.” I celebrate my mother-in-law, Pat, who raised four beautiful children while continuing a kind of local and social activism that would make the founders of Mother’s Day proud. I get to be married to a woman who has raised her children to know of their roots which are deep in the soil of unconditional love. She also gave them wings to fly where their dreams and ambitions would lead. And finally, in this fast-paced, confusing world that is riddled with fear like bullets from a machine gun, I’ve been thrilled to watch my stepdaughter raise a son with a passion and good cheer that are truly effervescent and inspiring.
I’d like to share with you an entry from an old diary. The selection is dated to the month of February in 1884. The place of writing is New York City and the author is only twenty three years old. His name is Theodore Roosevelt, and he would eventually become the 26th President of the United States. Here’s what he wrote in his diary:
Alice Hathaway Lee, born at Chestnut Hill, July 28th, 1861. I saw her first
in October of 1878; I wooed her for over a year before I won her; we were
betrothed on January 25th 1880, and it was announced on February 16th;
on October 27th of the same year we were married; we spent three years of
happiness greater and more unalloyed than I have ever known fall to the
lot of others; on February 12th, 1884, her baby was born and on February
14th she died in my arms, and my mother had died in the same house,
on the same day, but a few hours previously. On February 16th they were
buried together in Greenwood. On February 17th I christened the baby
Alice Lee Roosevelt. For joy or for sorrow my life has now been lived out.
On February 14, 1884, the day that BOTH his mother and the mother of his child died, there was only a short entry. He wrote a large letter X on the page and wrote the following underneath: “The light has gone out of my life.”
If anyone could understand the true origins of Mother’s Day in the United States, it was Roosevelt. Motherhood was the light of his life, and its value to him was equal only to his grief at its loss.
Although Mother’s Day in America is sometimes called a “Hallmark” holiday, it did not begin with a greeting card company. One report this week declared that Americans spent $129.00, on average, for their mothers on Mother’s Day in 2010. This year, the amount is expected to approach $140.00. But the economics of the day are not our concern. The origin of the day and its observance, however, are.
For the origin, in our country, we turn back time to the 1850s, and we note that it started with the acknowledgment of sickness, pain, the facing of life’s limits, and hopes for peace. There was a mother, Anna Jarvis, a homemaker in the Appalachian mountain range, who wanted to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community. She thought the cause could best be advocated by mothers. She called it “Mother’s Work Day.”
Fifteen years later, Julia Ward Howe, a Boston poet, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed, as one author points out, that they (mothers) “bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else. “
In 1905 the daughter of Anna Jarvis, also named Anna, began a campaign to memorialize the life and work of her mother. Her effort took her to the halls of congress and to the White House itself where she lobbied Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson to create a day to honor mothers. Her mother’s favorite flower, the white carnation, became a national symbol of Mother’s Day which became a national holiday at the signature of President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
Some of our first lessons about the world we live in come from our mothers. Some of our first lessons about love come from our mothers. As we grow and mature, many of teachings continue to be shaped by our families, our culture, through education and the world around us.
It’s important to note that Mother’s Day falls during the season of Easter as we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the grave. As our mothers brought us into the world, Jesus Christ, in His triumph over death, brought into the world the first glimpse of the new creation. He rose, victorious from the tomb, to show us our destiny.
Until we ourselves reach that destiny, or, as the The Apostles’ Creed puts it, “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”, we are what today’s text from God’s Word calls “exiles” or “foreigners.” We may, at times, sing with Lee Greenwood: “I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free, and won’t forget those who died who gave that right to me.” We may be, as the saying goes, “Texas born and Texas bred, and when I die I’m Texas dead.” But ultimately, we’re all on a journey to our ultimate home! St. Augustine called that the “City of God,” or, as John Winthrop put it, the “shining city on a hill.”
You may not believe this. And the fact is, I can’t make you believe it or, worse, force you to believe it. I wouldn’t want to anyway; that’s not my job. My job is simply to proclaim it, and then leave the rest to the Holy Spirit.
We all have a variety – a diversity, if you will – of viewpoints, beliefs, and opinions. But, for the moment, I’m going to assume that we’re all on the same page when it comes to this matter of being foreigners and exiles in this life on our way home to God.
My question, therefore, is: what would life as “foreigner” or an “exile” look like? Our text is quick to supply the answer: “Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.” Did you catch that? It doesn’t say “Live out your lives in fear.” Based on a cursory look at the times we live in, it would appear that we already have that down pat. Rather, it say to live out life in “reverent fear.”
Reverent fear acknowledges that life on this earth is far more than the sum total of triumphs, tragedies, and our reactions to the same. Reverent fear confesses that Jesus Christ died and rose for you, for me, and for us all. That will color and shape all of life. Reverent fear looks at life and says: “God is in control, and God is gracious.” Reverent fear is happy to sing, in the words of a best-loved hymn: “God’s grace has brought me safe thus far; God’s grace shall lead me home.”
Again, what does life as a foreigner and exile look like? It looks like people, people on their way home to God, that love one another from the heart. Again, hear the words from our text: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.”
Folks, it’s possible to love people in your thoughts – as in, “I think I love you.” It’s possible to love people in theory. Theoretically, would it not be a better world if we loved one another? It’s possible to love people in terms of an obligation – as if love were solely a matter of duty. Yes, it’s possible to love others mentally, theoretically, and dutifully. You can love in all these ways – but not effectively.
Effective love is heartfelt love, self-giving love, sacrificial love, the love that comes from the heart of God. It’s a love that at so many times and in so may ways is channeled through a mother.
In the 1600s, in the midst of a thirty years wary, at a time when one Protestant pastor was burying far more people than baptizing them, Martin Rinkart could still write words that capture the reverent fear and heartfelt love of which the Scripture speaks:
Now thank we all our God with hearts and hands and voices,
Who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices.
Who, from our mothers’ arms, hath blessed us on our way
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
Reverent fear and heartfelt love: this is what it’s all about.
Amen.
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